


pack up the moon, dismantle the sun

by theseourbodies



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 05:22:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6691318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseourbodies/pseuds/theseourbodies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doris McGarrett's funeral is less awful than what comes after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pack up the moon, dismantle the sun

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written while I was watching season 1, which explains any and all canon-discrepancies. I hope you enjoy it, despite that. This was originally the first part of a full AU, but the second half was forever lost. I may finish it at some other time.

i.  
The day of the funeral is bright and crystal clear—just another day on the island. Another day in paradise. Steve watches the sun come up, marking its progress along the far wall of his bedroom. Ten more minutes, he thinks, and then ten more minutes again. He’s never been one to sleep late—but then, it’s not as if he had actually slept last night. Ten more minutes and he’ll get up. Ten more minutes and maybe he can stop shaking enough to make it to the neatly pressed-and-plastic-wrapped suit still laying where he’d hurled it last night, at the base of his board in the corner. 

Ten more minutes.

Someone comes by three times to knock gently—or maybe three separate people come by once, and the gentle, uniform knocking is just something that they teach you to do when you become an adult. The house has been full of people all week, and it feels like all of them have been gently knocking while they try to take up all the space that Steve hadn’t really realized his mom occupied until she was gone. They talk quietly, move quietly, knock quietly; Steve has never in his life felt such bitter hatred for more people. 

Ten more minutes.

He makes it to seven, but then the door opens without a knock. Chin Ho is in his dress uniform, and his familiar face isn’t gentle or sympathetic or anything but placid, calm like the deep pools you can find in the jungle. He’s got Mary Ann’s hand gripped gently in his, and embarrassment swamps Steve so quickly he feels nauseous. Steve stops counting, and gets up quickly after that, picking up the crumpled suit in the corner and smoothing it, face burning, throat tight. He tugs off his sleep shirt—Chin leaves, but Mary walks unsteadily to the tangle of blankets on Steve’s bed to curl up in the spot he had recently vacated. He doesn’t say anything, just keeps the boxers he went to bed in on and focuses on getting every part of the stupid suit put on in the correct order. All of his mom’s family are from the mainland, and since it was an aunt he’s never met who had to take control of funeral preparations, it’s going to be a mainland style funeral—the suit is expected, and like the gentle knocking and the quiet voices, Steve hates it with every particle of his being. 

Mary Ann stirs when he starts making hurt, angry sounds at the tie he’s trying to get under control. She looks as tired as he feels, like she hasn’t slept for years; she takes him in, says, “you look like a fucking _haole_ , brah,” and bursts into tears. 

She tucks her face into the ugly skirt of her crinkly black dress and Steve wraps himself around her instead of putting his fist through the wall like he wants to. They sit like that for not nearly long enough, both of them crying nasty, until Chin comes back to collect them. He ties Steve’s tie and smooths Mary’s hair and then he hugs the both of them tight, so tight, as if he knows they’re about to fly apart and he’s trying to keep them together for just a little longer. Steve buries his face in Chin’s shoulder and thinks, hysterically, _Just ten more minutes, ten more minutes_. 

A gentle knock on the open door proceeds a soft voice that tells him it’s time to go, and Steve has to focus on taking even, deep breaths until he and Mary Ann make it to the SUV waiting to take what’s left of his family to scatter his mother’s ashes on the sea, like she wanted, like she probably always assumed her grown children would find closure in doing. Steve feels like he needs to try. He feels like he needs to try to find closure, but as he watches his dad’s eyes slip over his face and avoid looking at Mary Ann at all, Steve can’t help but think that it might just be the hardest thing he’s ever done. 

ii.   
They do what needs to be done, and as the silken ash slips through his fist once, twice, three times until he finally comes up empty and all of what was left of his mother is scattered into the ocean she loved, he feels a little of his anger slip away, too. Mary’s hold on his hand goes from white-knuckle tight to gentle as he lets his handfuls go and go and go; she doesn’t let go, which is good, because he’s pretty sure he isn’t capable of letting go even if he wanted to. The day is beautiful, and he’s grateful. It’s just another day in paradise. 

iii.  
It doesn’t last, of course. 

They’re father drives them back to the house, where people are still talking quietly but there’s such a sense of relief that the whole place feels warmer, brighter, actually full instead of just occupied. It’s been six months since the had gotten that call, since their father had checked out for a week and Steve had scrambled to pick up the slack of a missing mother and a father, for his sister and himself. Chin Ho had been the one to find their dad, dead on his feet and desperate. Steve had wondered through the haze of grief and the agony of knowing he would never see his mother again what it was his father was desperately looking for, what had caused him to go and go and go; it had been like a punch to the gut to realize that his father had considered it a better alternative than having to come home and look his children in the eye—to look his daughter, who looked so much, too much like her mother, in the eye.   
Steve had never felt such helpless rage in his entire life, all his pain and sadness hardening up into thick, defensive skin that he hoped could protect him. Releasing his mom’s ashes, feeling them slide away from him at his own pace, had released a lot of the worst of the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that came from being so defensive all the time. He lowers his defenses because he really does feel a little more at ease than he had when he finally got out of bed this morning, feels a little lighter. 

He should have known better. 

People filter slowly out of the house, half the HPD and several politicians giving their condolences and stepping out, their friends and neighbors staying longer and later, giving them something to be happy about, lending comfort. Steve’s still leery about his mom’s family, unfamiliar with most of them and uncertain of his standing in their eyes. Their guarded expressions were still better than the sick, flat look that wouldn’t leave his father’s eyes. John still wasn’t looking directly at his own kin, accepting handshakes and comfort with a tic in his jaw and the same flat tone of voice. He wasn’t even trying. Steve can’t bring himself to feel angry; in retrospect, he wishes he would have said something, made his dad look at him and recognize just how hurtful he was being. Maybe then he could have avoided the intensely awkward atmosphere that fills the house when it’s just Steve and Mary’s Aunt Janet and Uncle Jerome, the only relatives who had been staying in the house, are the only ones left besides the McGarretts themselves. Chin leaves when the rest of the Kelly clan does, plain reluctance on his face. 

Janet’s called Steve in to help her clean a little; picking up plates and cups and pitching them is a basic, repetitive task and he relaxes into it easily, vaguely aware of Jerome and his father—voice thick and rusted from disuse—talking softly in the dining room. Steve hasn’t slept more than six hours in the past three days; he gets lost in the task at hand, slipping in an out of awareness. He doesn’t realize that Mary Ann is in the dining room too until he hears her voice, thick with something terrifying, start shouting. It shocks him out of his daze, makes him tense and ready for anything when she runs out of the dining room and slams into him so hard that she almost knocks him over. She’s babbling, her voice high and frantic, trying to tell him—something, he can’t quite…

Janet comes in almost immediately after Mary, distress making her own voice thready and her eyes wide. “Mary Ann, please, you have to understand, this is really the best option.” 

Mary howls into Steve’s chest, where she’s buried her face, her whole body shuddering with an immense sob. Janet looks overwhelmed for a second, before color splotches her cheeks and she says, sharply, “Now _please_ , Mary Ann--!” 

Steve’s had about enough of this as he can take, and like hell is this women who he barely knows going to reprimand his sister four hours after they honored their mother’s passing. “What’s going on, what did you say to her?” He asks, drawing himself up to his full height while drawing Mary closer to him. She’s subsides minutely, but he can still feel her trembling. “What the hell is going on?” 

“Steven, please, there’s no need to be so rude,” his aunt says, and she looks so tired and so angry that it’s amazing he ever thought she looked just like his mom. “Your father thinks—and I agree—that it would be good for the two of you to spend some time away from this house while he works out some final arrangements. You would stay with Uncle Henry, Steven, and Mary Ann would stay with us.” 

There’s so much to handle in just this one statement that Steve almost physically staggers. “Wha—leave Hawai’i?” He understood staying somewhere else—their father had some major shit to work out. But there were homes that would welcome both he and Mary—oh _God_.

The second part of Janet’s statement hits him like a punch to the throat as he remembers Janet saying—in her gentle, quiet voice before the funeral, that she and her husband lived in Telluride and that last summer she had been so disappointed when Steve’s mom hadn’t been able to make it to their brother’s place, Uncle Henry’s place, in—

In _New York_.

“You want to split us up?”

Janet’s expression has simply soured, all her own grief and uncertainty finally finding an outlet. “It’s not as if you’re going off to the wars, Steven! You’ll be with family, and I see my brother very often, at least once every year!” 

Steve’s horrified, all his calm evaporating in raw panic and fear. “Wh—why, I don’t, I don’t understand. Dad? Dad!”

“Enough, Steve. Enough yelling, your mo—we didn’t raise you in a damn barn.” John finally steps into the room slowly, eyes down and looking like he’s carrying the weight of all nine planets, he’s so stooped. “I think this is a way for you and Mare to start fresh for a little bit, get some new air.”

“On the mainland? Dad, there are plenty of people to stay with right here, in the city even!” What did we do wrong, Steve wants to ask, half hysterical already and struggling to breathe. What have we done? “Why can’t Mary and I stay together, at least?” 

“It’s important to me that you stay with family, especially your m—her family. It’ll help keep her alive in your memories. I can’t ask our family to take both of you at once, not with the economy the way it is. Please. Please just... Try to understand.” 

Mary has cried herself out against Steve’s chest. She’s leaning into him, hard, and he suspects that if he steps away she’d simply collapse from exhaustion. She shakes her head slowly against him and he feels so—absolutely powerless. He looks up and Janet still has that sour expression on her face, something bitter that he can’t quite identify. Jerome is still off in the dining room, and John…

Their father still won’t look at them, still can’t stand it apparently. He’s looking through the back windows, but he’s not seeing paradise, recovery. Steve wants to grab him, shake him out of it. In that instant, Steve wants to hit his father so hard that that he can’t afford to look anywhere but at Steve, all that cop-focus on the enemy—on what he’s made his son into. Maybe it is better that they get as far away from this man as possible, Steve thinks suddenly. Maybe that’s the only thing to be done.

“Jerome and I,” Janet starts, and then stops herself. She visibly calms, takes a seat on the couch and sinks into it. When she speaks again, she sounds much more neutral, compassion sneaking in again. “We’ll be here for another week, at least. Henry will do the same, Steve. I know that’s not enough time,” she says, cutting off a quiet, desperate sound from Mary, “but that’s all we can give you. Please consider this as a new start.” She sounds a little desperate. Steve wishes he could find it in him to be compassionate at the moment. He really wishes he could take a full breath without feeling like he’s about to die. All he can do is nod stiffly, and try not to cry when Mary slowly stands up straight and does the same. 

Steve can’t get to sleep for a long time that night, but eventually his body simply can’t take it anymore. He drops into unconsciousness between one blink and the next, and the last thing he can remember thinking is that his mom is dead. He doesn’t want to try to keep her alive, if this is what it means.


End file.
